Despite dire predictions that the North Pole would be ice-free in the near future, Arctic Sea ice levels have been more stable than scientists predicted. So far this winter, Arctic Sea ice levels are above where they were at the same time last winter and are well within the the standard deviation of the 1981 to 2010 variation, according to daily sea ice data.Europe’s CryoSat-2 satellite found that sea-ice volumes for the fall of 2014 were above the average extent for the last five years. Sea-ice levels were up sharply from 2011 and 2012, according to the satellite– only slightly...

Competition in the Arctic is heating up as Denmark has laid claim to the North Pole. Copenhagen is citing scientific data showing that Greenland, which is an autonomous country within Denmark, sits atop a continental shelf connected to a ridge beneath the Arctic Circle. The Associated Press reports that Danish Foreign Minister Martin Lidegaard said this new information provides the country with a claim to the region and, more critically, the energy resources thought to be in the Arctic. Lidegaard said Denmark would take its claim to the UN for an eventual decision on the control of the area. …

Four Su-34 Fullback bombers have reached the North Pole. Mig-31 Foxhounds prepare to. In what is another sign of the renewed interest for the Arctic, four Russian Sukhoi Su-34 bombers have reached the North Pole recently. In spite of a range (on paper) of 4,000 km, according to the Interfax news agency, the four bombers refueled twice during the flight, performing air-to-air refueling in pairs. The flight of Fullback planes covered a total distance of more than 50,000 km in three days; each Su-34 spent about 20 hours in flight during the trip. Not only Su-34s have been operating over...

On this date in 1958, the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear-powered submarine, became the first naval vessel to reach the North Pole, having traveled under the icepack from the Barrow Sea across the North Pole and eventually surfacing north of Greenland. SSN-571 would be decommissioned in 1980, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1982, and is now a museum ship in Groton, Connecticut.

There are various stories about how powerful solar flares were, starting in 2012. Maybe they had an impact on the North Pole or South Pole. Maybe such an effect impacting how cold the winter of 2013/2014 has been. The previous winter -- from December 2012 to March 2013, was initially mild. Then the weather in the Spring was a little bit more chilly. Is it possible that Solar Flares affect the earth's poles. And in affecting the earth's poles, maybe they effect the weather. Anything is possible, and it is up to science to investigate such links. Maybe it would...

Stephen Harper has ordered government bureaucrats back to the drawing board to craft a more expansive international claim for seabed riches in the Arctic after the proposed submission they showed him failed to include the geographic North Pole, The Globe and Mail has learned. The Arctic is believed to contain as much as one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered energy resources, and countries are tabling scientific evidence with a United Nations commission to win rights to polar sea-floor assets. Under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, a country can secure control of ocean floor beyond the internationally recognized...

The magnetic north pole has moved 161 miles in 6 months only, this puts its arrival in Siberia in less that 2 years, and it is when it arrives there that it will have migrated 40 degrees across the northern hemisphere at this point the poles will shift at high speed over the equator until it reaches 40 degrees south, i will tell you what i expect to happen when it goes past the 40 degrees point in the coming uploads...

Under contract to the U.S. Air Force, Northrop Grumman's B-2 Spirit stealth bomber has completed its first 18.5-hour sortie over the North Pole to validate new flight management software. The computer upgrade system, which is the cornerstone for all future B-2 upgrades, is now ready to enter low-rate initial production. The Extremely High Frequency (EHF) Increment 1 system verification review demonstrated the computer upgrade program successfully satisfied the government's requirements. The sortie also included air-refueling to and from the North Pole from Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The verification reviews and flight test were the culmination of over two years...

America and Eurasia will crash into each other over the north pole in 50-200 million years time, according to scientists at Yale University. They predict Africa and Australia will join the new "supercontinent" too, which will mark the next coming together of the Earth's land masses. The continents are last thought to have come together 300 million years ago into a supercontinent called Pangaea. Details are published in the journal Nature. The land masses of the Earth are constantly moving as the Earth's as tectonic activity occurs. This generates areas such as the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, where Iceland has formed, and...

Polar bears drowning in an Alaskan sea because the ice packs are melting—it’s the iconic image of the global warming debate. But the validity of the science behind the image—presented as an ignoble testament to our environment in peril by Al Gore in his film An Inconvenient Truth—is now part of a federal investigation that has the environmental community on edge. Special agents from the Interior Department’s inspector general's office are questioning the two government scientists about the paper they wrote on drowned polar bears, suggesting mistakes were made in the math and as to how the bears actually died,...

Conservative bloggers are calling for a boycott of the company. Executives say the series, in which Santa is warned the North Pole could melt before Christmas, was intended to inspire children.St. Louis - First, Chicken Little warned children that the sky was falling. And now Build-a-Bear Workshop has warned children that the North Pole could disappear before Christmas. The Missouri-based company has found itself in hot water, defending an animated series on its website featuring polar bears, penguins and Mrs. Claus, as Santa is warned that global warming is "a serious situation." Conservative bloggers reposted the videos online and called...

For more than 50 years, NORAD and its predecessor, the Continental Air Defense Command (CONAD) have tracked Santa’s Christmas Eve flight. The tradition began in 1955 after a Colorado Springs-based Sears Roebuck & Co. advertisement for children to call Santa misprinted the telephone number. Instead of reaching Santa, the phone number put kids through to the CONAD Commander-in-Chief's operations "hotline." The Director of Operations at the time, Colonel Harry Shoup, had his staff check the radar for indications of Santa making his way south from the North Pole. Children who called were given updates on his location, and a tradition...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Wide-eyed children around the world will be hearing from Santa's "elves" at the North Pole after all. During Christmas seasons for decades, these dedicated elves responded to thousands of letters addressed to "Santa Claus, North Pole." All that was ending with a U.S. Postal Service decision to discontinue the program based in the small Alaskan town amid privacy concerns. The elves from Santa's Mailbag vowed to fight the decision, while North Pole residents voiced outrage. A reversal of the Postal Service move was announced Friday. "We never wanted to spoil people's Christmas," said agency spokesman Ernie...

The mayor of North Pole, Alaska is calling a recent postal service decision an assault on Christmas. For years, the U.S. Postal Service has delivered thousands of letters to Santa Claus in North Pole, Alaska. Now, in the interest of efficiency and security, the post office has changed its policy. It will no longer deliver letters to Santa here, and requests for a North Pole postmark will be filled through its Anchorage office. The decision has angered many residents, most notably the owner of the area’s primary attraction, the Santa Claus house.

Climate Change: As a Colorado Rockies playoff game is snowed out, scientists report that Arctic sea ice is thickening and Antarctic snow melt is the lowest in three decades. Whatever happened to global warming? Al Gore wasn't there to throw out the first snowball, er, baseball, so he might not have noticed that Saturday's playoff game between the Colorado Rockies and the Philadelphia Phillies was snowed out — in early October. The field should have been snow-free just as the North Pole was to be ice-free this year. It seems that ice at both poles hasn't been paying attention to...

Stansted Airport in Essex has renamed its 3,000m (9,750ft) runway because the position of the Earth's magnetic North Pole has moved. The runway was known by pilots and air traffic controllers as 23/05 because of its location and compass heading. The magnetic North Pole drifts naturally, and every 50 years its position alters significantly. Managers at Stansted decided they must call the runway 22/04 to reflect the new position and bearing. Trevor Waldock, head of airside operations, said: "We've had to make this change due to the Magnetic North Pole slowly drifting on the Earth's surface but our runway remains...

Three British explorers trying to ski to the North Pole to measure the thickness of sea ice only have one day's food left as bad weather hampers supply flights, the mission said Tuesday. Project director and ice team leader Pen Hadow and his colleagues Martin Hartley and Ann Daniels are now down to half rations and fighting to survive in brutal sub-zero weather conditions. ---snip--- During the past 17 days temperatures have consistently dropped below minus 40 degrees Celsius (-40 degrees Fahrenheit), and have been accompanied by strong winds increasing the chill factor. Bad weather has forced three attempts to...

-43 Degree Temps Recorded In North Dakota Much of the country is in winter's icy grip and forecasters said it won't be letting go anytime soon. In Pollock, S.D., temperatures fell to a record-setting 47 below zero Thursday. Todd Moser works at a gas station where he said it took about 10 minutes to get the pumps working. Record to near record lows were set all over the Midwest, including Aberdeen, S.D., at -42 degrees; Dubuque, Iowa, at -26 degrees; Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at -29 degrees. The -29 degrees at Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was the coldest temperature ever recorded there...

DES MOINES, Iowa --A blast of arctic air settling in over Iowa on Wednesday could bring the Des Moines area's lowest temperatures in 12 years, said KCCI meteorologist Kurtis Gertz. Temperatures could dip to -15 degrees tonight, a low not touched since 1996.

While the North Pole’s landscape may evoke images of igloos and barren snow fields, the crescent moon and minaret will soon vie for their place in Norway’s Arctic thanks to a Saudi businessman’s donation to build the region’s first mosque. A Saudi businessman has donated 20 million Krone ($2.78 million) to build the first mosque in the Arctic region, near the northern part of Norway, according to a news report published by a local Saudi newspaper. In April the Muslim association in the Arctic town of Inuvik, Canada raised $40,000 to purchase land for a mosque two degrees above the...

Ever since Russia planted a flag under the North Pole last year, the issue of sovereign rights under an increasingly slushy arctic has tensed. In a race to claim ownership of some of the arctic seabed, a two-ship caravan of Canadian and U.S. scientists is sailing around the Arctic Ocean right now. Their mission, which will last from September 6th to October 1st, is to measure the seabed and the continental margins in an attempt to solidify our possible rights over the far north—an area that will become accessible to oil drilling and mining as the earth warms and arctic...

With another hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast, the so-called “bridge to nowhere,” championed by Alaska’s Congressional delegation on behalf of the people of Ketchikan, just won’t go away. Three years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the plan to spend hundreds of millions to connect Ketchikan with its airport on Gravina Island became a national symbol of Congressional excess, much to the dismay of Sen. Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young. Sen. John McCain has made it a habit to ridicule the bridge project during his presidential campaign. McCain has promised to veto any bill sent to...

New British map outlines potential lines of argument in battle for future energy resources. In a survey that could both help resolve and fuel the international dispute over energy resources in the Arctic, British researchers have concluded that both Denmark and Russia can claim the right to expand their sea borders to the North Pole. Five countries – Canada, Norway, the United States as well as Denmark and Russia – have territory within the Arctic Circle and, under international conventions, enjoy the right to economic zones within 200 nautical miles of their shores. These zones can, however, be expanded to...

How to be dishonest without actually lying A lesson from the mainstream media in dishonestyBy Mark Pfister The Independent recently published an article exclaiming, â€œExclusive: No ice at the North Pole"! The subtitle was "Polar scientists reveal dramatic new evidence of climate change".Upon first glance this sounds pretty crazy; no ice at the North Pole?! Global warming (climate change) is getting serious now; maybe those people denying man-made global warming (climate change) really are as bad as Ahmadinejad and all those crazy holocaust deniers. Before we even get into the article letâ€™s consider one thing. As a result of the...

Climate Change: While the media scream that man-made global warming is making the North Pole ice-free, another possible cause is as old as the Earth itself. They just have to look deeper.To the delight of Al Gore and the rest of the Gaia groupies, scientists at the National Snow & Ice Data Center in Colorado are predicting that the North Pole will be completely free of ice this summer. The apocalyptic headlines already are starting to appear. "From the viewpoint of science, the North Pole is just another point on the globe, but symbolically it is hugely important," says the...

Over the past few days, a plethora of articles have been published saying that Arctic ice is melting at a faster rate than last year, which was a recent historical record, and the North Pole will soon be ice free. The graphic below and link to this thread show the opposite: Compare (Arctic) Daily Sea IceAssociated web page:The Cryosphere Today As for the North Pole being ice free, there are openings in the sea ice that don't mean the entire surrounding area is free of ice:The Top of the World: Is the North Pole Turning to Water?

It's been proclaimed by scientists: Santa's doomed. The North Pole will have melted by the end of the summer. To which I say, let's wait and see (literally)! Global Warming alarmists are getting desperate, throwing terrorism and Santa's home into the mix to scare us. So, my humble radio show/podcast website now features a "North Pole Global Warming Cam". Link to the story in question, and audio, is available there. Freep on!

Character from climatescience.com on Fox now. Warns that the North Pole may (50-50 chance) COMPLETELY MELT this summer because of "global warning." This will, he says, create an ever accelerating melt of the Arctic that will be unstoppable. This sounds like good news for shipping and oil drilling to me.

PARIS (AFP) - Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday. The eruptions -- as big as the one that buried Pompei -- took place in 1999 along the Gakkel Ridge, an underwater mountain chain snaking 1,800 kilometres (1,100 miles) from the northern tip of Greenland to Siberia. Scientists suspected even at the time that a simultaneous series of earthquakes were linked to these volcanic spasms. But when a team led of scientists led by Robert Sohn of...

(CNN) -- The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. It's a 50-50 bet that the thin Arctic sea ice, which was frozen last autumn, will completely melt away at the geographic North Pole, Serreze said. Serreze said it's "just another indicator of the disappearing Arctic sea ice cover" but that it is happening so soon is "just astounding to me." "Five years ago, to think that we'd even be talking about the possibility of the North...

Study finds Arctic seabed afire with lava-spewing volcanoes The Arctic seabed is as explosive geologically as it is politically judging by the "fountains" of gas and molten lava that have been blasting out of underwater volcanoes near the North Pole. "Explosive volatile discharge has clearly been a widespread, and ongoing, process," according to an international team that sent unmanned probes to the strange fiery world beneath the Arctic ice. They returned with images and data showing that red-hot magma has been rising from deep inside the earth and blown the tops off dozens of submarine volcanoes, four kilometres below the...

After a 2007 polar meltdown that sparked global concern, experts say the stage is set for another record-setting retreat of Arctic Ocean ice - with a top Canadian climate scientist already bracing for the once-unthinkable: open water at the North Pole. "The North Pole may be free of ice for the first time in history," University of Manitoba polar specialist David Barber told Canwest News Service on Monday.

SYDNEY: A reversal of the Earth's magnetic poles could happen sooner than we think, according to Dutch scientists who report that the planet's magnetic field is becoming gradually less stable. A reversal could affect everything from navigation and communications equipment to the composition of the atmosphere, say experts. The report, published today in the U.K. journal Nature Geoscience, found that reversals have been far more common in the last 200 million years than they were deep in the planet's history. Wandering polesResearchers, led by Andrew Biggin of the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, made the discovery by analysing rocks...

Here's the good news: this summer's Arctic ice melt means an early start to the Hudson Bay shipping season. Forecasts show Coast Guard icebreakers will no longer be necessary for shipping to Churchill after July 16. That's 15 days earlier than the average ice-free shipping date of July 31, which means re-supply barges should able to reach communities in Nunavut's Kivalliq and Kitikmeot regions that much earlier. But the down side to the retreat of the Arctic's thin ice cover is a 50-50 chance that the North Pole will become ice-free this September - for the first time in more...

ON THE NBC nightly news there was a heart-throb report of an attractive British teen-ager who had skied across the North Pole with her father to demonstrate how the Arctic ice pack is receding in the face of global warming. Oh, horror. Oh, how terrible. The pictures were beautiful: Her pretty face, her gentle smile, her soft voice, her snow-crusted parka, the blue skies, the brilliant white ice, the cascading chunks of ice calving from glaciers, the two penguins standing on an ice flow. Wait a minute. Penguins? At the North Pole? Not that we ever heard of. So much...

You know when climate change is biting hard when instead of a vast expanse of snow the North Pole is a vast expanse of water. This year, for the first time, Arctic scientists are preparing for that possibility. "The set-up for this summer is disturbing," says Mark Serreze, of the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). A number of factors have this year led to most of the Arctic ice being thin and vulnerable as it enters its summer melting season. In September 2007, Arctic sea ice reached a record low, opening up the fabled North-West passage that...

Seattle - In an open letter to Santa last week and a speech to children at Seattle’s Annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony at Westlake Center, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels last week offered a Grinch-like tone, grumbling about climate change threatening Santa, telling kids “I hope the reindeer can swim,” and blaming them and their energy-sucking video games for melting Arctic ice. As Nickels spoke, his assistants handed out stickers admonishing the crowd to “Save Santa.”

BERLIN, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- What may turn into a Cold War-like resource conflict started quietly, with a vehicle called "Peace 1" some 2,500 miles below the North Pole. The Mir 1 miniature submarine, manned with three Russian scientists, on Aug. 2 planted a titanium capsule with a Russian flag into the seabed -- a symbol for Russia’s controversial claim of the vast resources that are believed to be stored below it. For the Russians and other states surrounding the North Pole, global warming may yet mean a financial blessing. U.S. scientist published a piece in Science that foresees record...

The Russian Natural Resources Ministry says samples of earth taken from where their navy planted a flag on the seabed below the North Pole show beyond doubt that the Arctic is Russian. “Extensive testing has shown that these soils are thoroughly permeated with the DNA of Russian prisoners who perished in the Gulags,” said Josef Zhukovsky, spokesman for the Ministry. “It is incontrovertible that Russians got there first. This precedence proves our claim to this land.” Apparently, the thousands of corpses thrown into the northerly flowing rivers that ran past the numerous concentration camps that served to house opponents of...

Russian bombers fly Alaska, Canada coastsPosted : Fri, 21 Sep 2007 15:08:47 GMT MOSCOW, Sept. 21 Russia resumed long-range military flights along the coasts of Alaska and Canada after a 17-year hiatus. The two Russian Tu-95MS strategic bombers participated in scheduled exercise drills that began Tuesday and were to end Friday, Itar-Tass reported. The bombers, monitored on their flights by NATO planes, returned to their home airfield Thursday via the North Pole, Col. Alexander Drobyshevsky told Itar-Tass. Russia resumed long-range flights to remote areas on order from Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said the flights are a security precaution...

Russia recently planted a flag under the North Pole. (Reuters: Reuters Television) Norway has called on countries with land bordering the Arctic region to stop the race to claim sovereignty over the region's vast mineral resources. Two weeks ago, a Russian mission to the North Pole planted a Russian flag on the Arctic sea-bed, while Denmark and the United States have sent expeditions to the region. But Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere says there are established procedures to deal with the issue. "If anybody is under the belief that we solve this by racing up there with flags or...

Swedish researchers have joined Danish colleagues in an attempt to establish Denmark's claims to parts of the Arctic region. The expedition follows the planting of a flag on the underwater Lomonosov Ridge by a Russian expedition last week. The expedition, led by Swedish icebreaker Oden, set off from Norway on Sunday. It is being led jointly by Martin Jakobsson of Stockholm University and Christian Marcussen of the Geological Survey of Denmark. The Danes claim that the ridge is on the same continental shelf as Greenland, which is a Danish territory. They hope that the expedition will prove the country's claim...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Coast Guard cutter is headed to the Arctic this week on a mapping mission to determine whether part of this area can be considered U.S. territory, after recent polar forays by Russia and Canada. The four-week cruise of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy starts Friday and aims to map the sea floor on the northern Chukchi Cap, an underwater plateau that extends from Alaska's North Slope some 500 miles northward. This is the third such U.S. Arctic mapping cruise -- others were in 2003 and 2004 -- and is not a response to a Russian...

CANADA has said it will build two new military bases in its far north as the battle for claims over Arctic Ocean resources heats up. Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the announcement during a tour of Canada's northern territories. It comes as a Danish mission prepares to sail to the North Pole to map the seabed under the ice. Last week, a Russian expedition planted the country's flag on the floor of the Arctic Ocean under the North Pole. Mr Harper said a cold-weather army training base would be set up at Resolute Bay and an existing port at a...

News agency Reuters has been forced to admit that footage it released last week purportedly showing Russian submersibles on the seabed of the North Pole actually came from the movie Titanic. The images were reproduced around the world - including by the Guardian and Guardian Unlimited - alongside the story of Russia planting its flag below the North Pole on Thursday last week. Titanic error: Reuters issued this film still with a story about the Russian flag being planted beneath the North Pole. Photograph: Reuters